 "Photo: Eliot Meyer; The Daily Texan")
 "Photo: Courtesy of Fox Searchlight")
Danny Boyle is the epitome of genre-hopper. The acclaimed director responsible for “Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine” returns to the director’s chair with “Slumdog Millionaire,” a dramatic coming-of-age story set in the bustling landscape of Mumbai. Jamal Malik (played by Dev Patel) is a poor teenager from the slums who receives the opportunity to go on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” As the movie unfolds, every question lends itself to a particular time in Jamal’s life, allowing him to answer the question and move closer to winning a staggering 20 million rupees. That is until he’s detained by cops under suspicion of cheating. The film is heartbreaking, heartwarming, and heart-wrenching all at once — a movie full of energy and passion, and cinematographically it’s something you only expect from a director like Boyle. The Daily Texan spoke with Boyle about the challenges of filming in a country like India and his initial hesitance at making a movie about “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
Daily Texan: You’ve talked about not wanting to do a “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” movie, so what about the script finally drew you in and convinced you to make the film?
Danny Boyle: It was partly its energy, which is linked to Mumbai. I mean, when you visit Mumbai you can’t help but try and capture some of that energy, because it’s the most overwhelming experience. I suppose it was also the structure of the script. I started off with a slight sinking feeling because I didn’t want to make a film about “Millionaire,” but the way [writer Simon Beaufoy] structured it in the script, with there being a question and the answer is provided in his life experience — that drew me in. Once you do one or two of those it gets dull and the book is a bit like that. But Simon bled time forward and backward; sometimes you’d hear the question after the answer and sometimes before. What’s good is it makes you, the reader or the audience, feel clever, because you’re not spoon-fed everything. And also it makes the structure bearable, whereas in the book it gets a bit unbearable and you tire of the sort of linear structure.
DT: What specifically did you want to bring to the movie?
DB: I love the idea of the underdog and those kinds of stories. You know, people who have nothing and then get everything or at least the chance to get everything. I love those stories. It was Mumbai really. I wanted to give everyone who watched it the feeling of being there. That’s what you want to do with all of your films, and that’s the challenge as a filmmaker, making the audience feel like they’re really there. But in Mumbai you can’t really control as many things, you know, like “keep those people out of the frame” or “make sure this happens,” because it’s just pouring life everywhere. So you have to cope with that and try and be wise and capture it well. All my days off I’d be out filming. They had to drag me away at the end, because it’s endless. If you talk to photographers about it there’s just so much to photograph all the time, you can’t just capture something and be done, because it’s always changing.
I just loved Mumbai, aside from between two and four in the morning when it goes to sleep and all you see are dogs wandering the street, the dogs that sleep all day. It’s quiet and weird, and then suddenly it all starts again.
DT: That sounds a bit like “28 Days Later.”
DB: Mumbai is definitely another city you could have shot that movie in. I also think you could do it in Austin, because I was noticing it’s not dominated by the motorcar in the way a lot of these big American cities are. It’s cool.
DT: So much of the movie is done with these two young actors (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) playing young versions of two of the main characters, and they’re just wonderful. What was the experience working with them?
DB: They don’t speak much English, so mostly it was Hindi. A lot of people speak English in Mumbai but don’t pick it up until they’re about 10 or so, not at seven. So there was a bit of a communication problem. But I mean, the kids there, it’s like here, movies are such a big part of life. There’s no barrier to acting, and they’ll do bits of dance for you from the shows and movies they’ve seen. If you can explain to them what you want, they can do it for you.
DT: You have done so many kinds of movies in so many different genres. What’s next?
DB: I was going to do an animated film but it’s fallen apart. I haven’t got anything lined up. I’ve got to just kind of go until January when “Slumdog Millionaire” is released everywhere, then I have to start looking for work. The thing about changing genres, or genre-hopping if you will, I mean it’s deliberate in one sense, but it’s nice to start fresh each time and from as low a point as you can be in a particular area, so you start as an innocent. With Mumbai I was a complete innocent. With “Sunshine” I’d never made a sci-fi movie, and knowing now what I do I’ll never make another one. [laughs] But that’s the thing, you start new and you learn so much.
